Science: Jack & the Soybean

“Soy Beans Set Pace for Chicago Grains,” headlined the New York Times one day last week, marking another new high for the most fantastic legume since Jack & the beanstalk. In 1917 the U.S. produced only 1,000,000 bushels of soybeans, in 1923 only 6,541,000; but last week crop experts foresaw a harvested soybean crop of 110,000,000 bushels—plus perhaps as much again that will be plowed under as fertilizer, used as pasturage, cured as hay or stored as silage. Next year the U.S. may well overtake Manchukuo (140,000,000 bu.) as the No. 2 soybean producer on earth, surpassed only by giant China (217,000,000 bu.).

Since this year’s low, soybean prices have risen 75% to $1.70 a bushel, despite the record crop. Chief reasons: 1) demand for soybean oils in Lend-Lease’s fats-for-Britain program; 2) low cotton-crop estimates foreshadow a low production of cottonseed oils. As a cash crop soybeans this year will almost equal potatoes, surpass citrus fruits, surpass in fact any other crop except the big four, cotton, wheat, corn, tobacco.

Shen-Nung and Captain Mease. Biggest soybean wonder is not its dizzy upward climb among U.S. crops but the late start it got. Botanists and chemists call it the world’s most all-round useful crop. Yet its widely publicized new industrial uses still consume only about 2% of the U.S. crop, most of which will go for purposes known to the Chinese as far back as 2838 B.C., when it was called China’s greatest legume in a materia medica written by the Emperor Shen-Nung (“The Heavenly Farmer”).

In 1804, a century before U.S. farmers took even a faint interest in them, the first soybeans were brought to this country by an amateur horticulturist named Dr. James Mease. “The soybean is adapted to Pennsylvania,” he observed, “and should be cultivated.” But Europe (where they are hard to grow) and America (where they grow easily) alike ignored the soybean until the Russo-Japanese War left Japan with a surplus of Manchurian beans to dump somewhere. In 1908 the fabulous banker-merchant clan of Mitsui shipped 2,000 tons to England, where cottonseed and linseed oils were momentarily scarce. Soybean oil proved a good substitute, and from then on both Europe and the U.S. imported increasing quantities.

Since then botanists have hunted through Asia and bred in the U.S. varieties which will prosper in each type of soil and climate in the eastern U.S. and which have increased the yield per acre from 11.5 bushels (1924-27) to 18.7 bushels (1937-40). Among the 2,500 varieties are Huang-tou, Manchu, Ito San and Hahto; Lexington, Tarheel Black, Illini, Wilson and Roosevelt—a vivid index to the Asiatic heritage and U.S. adoption of the plant.

Green Manure & Rabbits. Soybeans grow well anywhere corn and cotton grow, so the U.S. corn and cotton belts are the U.S. soybean belt (see map, p. 40). In crop rotation they fit neatly into the place of oats, making a four-year cycle of corn, soybeans, wheat, clover. They are an ideal catch crop where early seedings of other crops have failed and will grow in the 100 to 120 days between a late spring harvest and a fall planting. They can be planted any time from corn-planting time (about April 15 on) to midsummer, a great convenience to season-bullied farm labor.

The soybean is one of the best green manures known to farmers. A legume, it takes nitrogen from the air rather than from the soil. The specialized bacteria which flourish among its roots fix nitrogen in the soil and leave it more fertile than ever. (When a field is sown for the first time with soybeans, the soil is usually inoculated with cultures of these bacteria to assure a good crop.) The soybean’s stalk and leaves also contain usable nitrogen. Plowed under, a two-ton crop of soybeans adds to the soil as much nitrogen and organic matter as at least seven tons of manure.

The soybean as yet has no fearful enemies, whether insect (like the corn borer) or fungus (like the wheat rusts and smuts) or virus (like the tobacco mosaic). Today the soybean’s worst pest is probably the rabbit, who madly loves the luscious young plants and makes production almost impossible in the western U.S. (see map) and in Australia. Though it grows poorly in a dry climate, the soybean when once germinated can withstand unusual drought as well as overmuch wetness and corn-killing frosts.

Unique as a vegetable is the bean itself. It contains three to four times as much protein (40%) as oats, wheat, corn, rice, rye, eggs—and about twice as much as peas, field beans, pork, beef. It contains four to 20 times as much fat as any other edible seed—as much fat as beefsteakand two-thirds as much as pork. It supplies at least 15% more calories by weight than any other common food except butter. Its great lack, compared with other vegetable foods, is carbohydrates (starches, sugars, etc.). It is from the soybean, prepared 400 ways, that 600,000,000 Orientals obtain the vital proteins and fats which they never get in all their lives from the rest of their diet.

But the soybean has not caught on as a major food among Western peoples because it cannot be prepared like their traditional dishes. Unlike other beans, it cannot be baked or boiled up into a succotash. Even six hours of boiling fails to soften the hard, bitter soybeans, for they contain almost no starch. However, as the Chinese have alwavs known:

> Sprouted soybeans are tender and tasty. In 1939 the U.S. packed 360,000 cans, not all of which were consumed in China towns.

> Soybeans can be ground into a pale yellow, almond-flavored “flour.” Extremely nourishing, it is best mixed (about 20%) with protein-and fat-deficient cereal flours to make breads, macaroni, cakes, etc. It can also be mixed (30%) with sausages and other minced meats, with ice cream (25%), cocoa & chocolate (50%), soups, candies, preserves, etc.

> Soybeans can be made into a milk or milk powder not unlike cow’s milk, and also into cheeses and sauces.

Off to the Factory. The industrial career of the soybean begins when about 56% of the threshed crop is carted off to the pressing mill (the rest is used for seed, export, human and animal foods). There the soybean becomes, by weight, about 15½% oil and 78% meal. Three-fourths of the U.S. oil is refined and deodorized; then 57% goes into vegetable shortenings, 20% into margarine and 9% into salad and cooking oils, salad dressings, etc. One-quarter of the oil, unrefined, goes to other uses:

> Biggest consumer is the paint & varnish industry. Best paint is made from relatively costly, drying linseed oil. Soybean oil is semi-drying, always leaves the paint film slightly sticky. But, mixed with linseed oil, soybean oil makes a cheaper paint good for many purposes. Chemists recently learned how to treat soybean oil so that it takes on the properties of another important but hard-to-get paint ingredient, Chinese tung oil.

> Soapmakers are using more & more crude soybean oil because, like palm-nut, olive and coconut oils it can be made into an excellent lather-maker which produces suds even in salty sea water.

>Linoleum and oilcloth makers consume soybean oil in large amounts.

As for the 78% of the crushed bean which turns into meal, the Commodity Year Book says: “More than 95% . . . is used for feeding livestock and poultry. . . . The feeding of livestock does not lend itself to dramatization and human interest stories, and therefore many people are led to believe that the minor uses of soybean oil meal are the major uses.”

These dramatic if minor uses are of growing importance:

>Treated with organic solvents, soybean meal makes a plastic which is light, durable, almost transparent, waterproof, fireproof, rotproof. Many auto parts and countless miscellaneous objects are made of it. A main drawback, which chemists soon expect to overcome, is that it is hygroscopic (too eager to absorb water).

>Soybean protein can be made into synthetic wool-like fibers, now being developed for use in auto upholstery by Ford Motor Co. It is warmer than rayon.

> Soybean protein makes a fine, cheap (16¢ a lb.) substitute for casein, protein derivative of milk which is now painfully costly (28¢ a lb.). Three-fourths of the casein consumed in the U.S. goes into making coated papers, the rest into plywoods, plastics, water paints, leather finishes, etc. With soybean protein the Department of Agriculture is striving to meet a great demand for casein substitutes in housing and defense industries.

These technological uses of the soybean meal and oil account for no more than 3% of recent crops. As foods, fertilizers, soap, lubricants, etc., soybean products have been used by the Chinese for ages.

With the soybean, as with no other plant, can man feed, clothe and house himself and manufacture countless further articles. The next 20 soybean years may be as incredible as the last 20. Says the U.S. Department of Agriculture: “In spite of extensive investigations, the work of developing this versatile plant to its fullest possibilities is still in its infancy.”